


Powder Keg

by youcouldmakealife



Series: Impaired Judgment (and other excuses) [37]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 12:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15143468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: “Sorry,” Bryce says again — Jared figured out that one too — when he walks in the door twenty minutes later.“No worries,” Jared says, but he reverses that immediately when he gets a better look at Bryce, who’s practically weaving on his feet. He nearly fucking goes down head first when he tries to get his shoes off.“Jesus,” Jared says. “How much did you drink?”





	Powder Keg

They don’t get to experiment much more before Bryce heads out of town. Jared follows him out, annoyingly the freaking day Bryce gets home. He’s got to get used to it, though. Who even knows where he’ll be next year — well, it’ll probably still be with the Hitmen; the only dudes who jump right into the NHL are the high first rounders, maybe some other standouts if the team’s shitty enough. They’ll probably want him to stay in Juniors for at least another year. Again, unless the team’s shit.

Fuck, Jared doesn’t want to play for a shitty team. Too bad he has all of zero control over that.

On the bright side, at least he isn’t playing for a shitty team right now? The Hitmen have come back from that pre-Christmas slide, and they’re not like, winning everything, but they’re at least _showing up_ for the losses they do get served, and they’re back to winning too. Wins: Jared missed you so much. Never leave him again.

They get back to Calgary in the middle of the day, which unfortunately means classes for him and everyone else still in high school. He sits through English and history scribbling half-hearted notes — he’s ahead right now, thanks to some Christmas break effort, and his history teacher isn’t really saying much that wasn’t already in the text book, his English class still working through a book he finished last week.

He heads to Bryce’s after school. It’s quiet, empty, even though he just had a morning practice today, no game until tomorrow, and Jared does some homework while he waits for him, frowning when the light starts to fade outside.

 _Hey, I’ve been at yours for awhile, where are you?_ Jared texts.

 _shit tly frgt u wr bk brt sry_ , Bryce sends, which is basically indecipherable.

Jared spends his time waiting half watching a recap of a Canucks-Oilers game from last night he forgot to check the score of — hard to root for anyone in that mess, but Jared finds himself reluctantly hoping the Oilers won. They’re basically in the toilet, so they’re no danger to the Flames, but the Canucks currently have the Northwest locked down. The other half of his attention he uses to try to parse whatever the hell Bryce is saying. Shit’s easy, doesn’t need any translation, and so is ‘totally’, though he dropped a ‘t’ from the usual short form, but what the hell is ‘brt’?

“Sorry,” Bryce says again — Jared figured out that one too — when he walks in the door twenty minutes later. 

“No worries,” Jared says, but he reverses that immediately when he gets a better look at Bryce, who’s practically weaving on his feet. He nearly fucking goes down head first when he tries to get his shoes off.

“Jesus,” Jared says. “How much did you drink?”

“Few guys recognised us, bought us drinks,” Bryce says, which isn’t an answer.

“Did they buy you a _keg_?” Jared asks.

“Nah,” Bryce says, and his hands, which can tie a tie without even looking, can unbutton Jared’s shirt faster than Jared can, fuck up twice as he tries to pull the zipper of his coat down. He’s fucking plastered.

“It’s not even like, five, and you’re trashed,” Jared says. “What the fuck. Did you drive?” 

“What?” Bryce asks.

“Did you fucking _drive_ , Bryce?” Jared snaps.

“No, fuck, Patter dropped me off,” Bryce says.

“Was he drinking too?” Jared asks.

Bryce doesn’t answer, which Jared’s going to take as a yes, and Jared honestly feels sick right now.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jared says. “You make a habit of getting too drunk to stand before dinner?”

“Lay off,” Bryce says. “You think I haven’t heard this shit enough?”

“Considering your history?” Jared says. “I’m sure you’ve heard it plenty of times.”

“Fuck _off_ ,” Bryce snaps. “You’re not my mom, and I’m a goddamn adult. I’m allowed to fucking drink.”

“Yeah,” Jared says. “But I’m the guy who made a promise to _his_ mom he wouldn’t be around you and alcohol, and you _knew_ that and still made me break it, so thanks for that.”

“Jesus, it’s not like I’m giving you any,” Bryce says.

“That’s not the fucking point!” Jared says. “The point is you just made me a goddamn liar.”

“Seriously?” Bryce says as Jared heads for the door, stopping only to shove his feet into his boots and grab his coat. “You’re fucking leaving because your overprotective mom made a stupid rule? What are you, seven?”

“No,” Jared says. “I just really don’t want to be around you right now.”

“Well fuck you too!” he hears as the door slams shut behind him.

Jared’s stuck bussing, thanks to the time they got in, and he doesn’t know what his face looks like right now, but it’s probably not good, considering there’s actual space around him even though it’s the middle of fucking rush hour. He forgot his damn textbook at Bryce’s, one he needs for tomorrow, but you know. Fuck it. And fuck him.

“Something wrong?” his mom asks when he gets home, looking up from the news, so apparently now he’s even _walking_ pissed or something.

“No,” Jared says. She said he couldn’t be around Bryce when he drank, so he left. He kept up his end of the bargain, and telling her is just going to stir shit up.

“You seem upset,” she says.

“I’m fine,” Jared says.

“Okay,” she says. “Did you and Bryce get—”

“I’m fine, okay?” Jared says. “So stop asking!”

“Okay,” she says, holding her hands up.

“Sorry,” Jared mumbles, then heads upstairs before she can take the apology as permission to ask again, because the longer he stays, the more likely he is to spill it all, and the deck’s stacked enough against Bryce with his parents as it is. Not that he wouldn’t deserve it being stacked more, considering, but Jared doesn’t want to blow shit up just because he’s pissed off now.

Jared tries and fails to do homework, much more successfully succeeds in ignoring his stupid phone, which has vibrated with an incoming call. Anything Bryce wants to say to him, he can wait until he’s fucking sober.

He switches his phone to silent after it starts vibrating again, wakes up the next morning to three missed calls, a bunch of texts that seem to miss the entire fucking point, all ‘sry wont drink around u again plz talk to me’, like that’s even the biggest fucking deal there. Which means he probably needs to talk to Bryce and knock it into his stupid, oblivious head what the actual problem _is_ , though he doesn’t really want to right now. He’s still pissed. He’d probably end up blowing up in Bryce’s face, which isn’t _undeserved_ , but is, historically, a bad way to get his point across in an argument. When he’s pissed he’s — not so good at discussion.

 _I’ll come over tomorrow after school to talk_ , Jared texts during lunch, then ignores the barrage of texts Bryce sends him in response. Bryce has pre-game, his game, so it’s not like they have the time to talk today anyway, not in person, and it’ll give Jared another day to cool off, try to figure out exactly what he’s going to say, because every time they end up talking about something important, he ends up with his foot in his fucking mouth.

Jared watches the game with his parents that night, can’t muster up all that much more than a grunt of his own when Bryce tallies a goal in the second, his parents side-eying one another over his head. 

“What?” Jared asks. “Maybe the grunting caught.”

“Uh huh,” his mom says. “Jared—”

“I’m watching the game,” Jared says, which is a shitty excuse, considering it’s just replays right now. It really was a beautiful goal. Guess Bryce isn’t too hungover today, or maybe he’s just so used to hangovers that he can play through them.

The Flames blow their lead in the third, the Canucks scoring two unanswered, one in the final damn minute, and Jared’s in a shitty mood when he heads up to his room. No different than the rest of the day, he guesses. Usually he’d text Bryce after, something like ‘shit loss, sorry’, the same way Bryce texts him after his games, but right now it’d probably be something like ‘what the fuck were you doing, you were clearly supposed to be the one covering the trailer’, and Bryce is probably going to hear that from Coach Burns anyway, so. Whatever.

Jared sleeps like shit. He remembers, fondly, a time that basically never happened — he lay down, he’d be out. Didn’t matter if there was an important game, or a test, or whatever. Sleep was easy, and sleep was sacred.

Bryce fucks with everything.

*

Jared has another shit day at school, gets nailed by his math teacher for not having the homework done, and ‘I left the textbook at my asshole boyfriend’s’ is probably not a good excuse, so Jared just deals with the ‘0’ presumably added to his grade on the homework front. If some time to cool off was supposed to work, well — it doesn’t. 

Well, it kind of does, because underneath the pissed, which he still is, there’s something like worry twisting in the pit of his stomach. Probably what all the pissed was in the first place. It’s the first time Jared’s seen Bryce drunk, but it’s obviously not the only time he’s _been_ drunk — hell, that’s public record — and Jared doesn’t know how many times he’s done it since they got together, how many nights Bryce went out when he was out of town, or Jared was, maybe was just the same as the other day, totally fine with getting in a car with someone who’d also been drinking, risking his neck, and for fucking _what_?

Bryce is sitting on the couch when Jared lets himself in, looks up at Jared with this expression that’s half conciliatory, half — Jared doesn’t know how to describe it. Braced for something, maybe. Which is probably good. 

“You tell your parents?” Bryce asks.

“No,” Jared says, not moving past the living room doorway. He doesn’t really want to be near Bryce right now.

Bryce exhales, sounding relieved. Jared thinks it’s a little early for that.

“I fucked up, okay,” Bryce says. “Forgot you were getting into town that night. I won’t drink around you again, okay?”

“That’s not the problem,” Jared says.

“Then what is?” Bryce says. 

“Uh,” Jared says. “The fact you were so drunk you could barely stand up straight?”

“Fuck’s sake, it’s not like I’ve done it when you’re around,” Bryce says. “It was one time.”

“And then the time you drove,” Jared says. “And I’m going to just assume you weren’t stone cold sober the time you punched an Oilers fan, either.”

“We weren’t even together then!” Bryce says. “You don’t get to fucking hold shit against me for things I did before we even met.”

“No?” Jared says. “Because it’s clearly still relevant.”

“Why do you even _care_?” Bryce says. “I told you I wouldn’t—”

“Because you’re my fucking boyfriend!” Jared says. “I’m kind of allowed to give a shit about you even when you’re not around me! For all I know you get like this every time you’re out of town and the next thing I know I’m going to wake up to find out you punched someone else or got in another crash and my parents are going to tell me I’m not allowed to go out with you.”

“You’re almost eighteen,” Bryce says. “It’s not like—”

“I don’t _want_ to date someone who gets trashed and then punches someone or fucking gets in a car accident,” Jared says. “Do you not get that? The shit they say about you being a fucking wild card who can’t control himself, I know that’s not you, but it isn’t _not_ not you either.”

“People get drunk, Jared,” Bryce says slowly, like Jared’s being stupid. “It’s kind of a thing they do.”

“Yeah, but most people are smart enough not to drive after,” Jared says.

“I told you I didn’t drive!” Bryce says.

“And Patterson was sober?” Jared says. “You got in a car _with_ someone who’d been drinking.”

“He was fine to drive,” Bryce says. “God, why are you making such a big deal out of this?”

“Because it kind of is one!” Jared says.

“Look, you’re like, seventeen, so maybe—” Bryce says.

“Oh don’t give me that condescending ‘you’re seventeen’ shit,” Jared says. “Just because I’m not legal yet doesn’t mean I’ve never drank before. I just know my goddamn limits.”

“Right,” Bryce says. “I forgot, you’re perfect. Always home by curfew, never drink more than—”

“This isn’t about me,” Jared snaps. “This is about me being worried about you.”

Bryce fucking rolls his eyes, and Jared almost snaps entirely, but he takes a deep breath, tries to remember what he practiced during his infuriatingly sleepless night.

“Like isn’t there some kind of rehab teams offer?” Jared starts. “Or counselors? I read about it, it’s like, confidential, right? Management won’t know if you give them a call?”

“I’m not a fucking _alcoholic_ ,” Bryce says. “I don’t even drink most days, I—”

“You don’t need to be drinking every day for it to be a problem, Bryce,” Jared says. “The fact you’ve been arrested _twice_? That means it’s a problem. I’m surprised they haven’t made you go already.”

“You’re being worse than my fucking mom right now,” Bryce says.

“Then maybe she needs to be harder on you,” Jared says. “Someone clearly does.”

“Fuck you,” Bryce says. “Don’t fucking talk about her.”

“I’m just saying—” Jared says, then, when Bryce gets up, heading into the kitchen, “Where are you going?” 

Bryce returns with a fucking beer, twists off the cap like he’s punctuating something, taking a long sip that’s a non-verbal equivalent of ‘go fuck yourself’.

“What are you even doing right now?” Jared asks.

“What does it look like?” Bryce asks.

“Bryce, for fuck’s—”

“Better leave,” Bryce says. “Wouldn’t want your mom getting pissed.”

“You know what?” Jared says, “go fuck yourself.” 

He heads out so furious he doesn’t remember to grab his math textbook, and there’s no fucking way he’s going back for it now, has to sit in the front seat of his car until his hands stop shaking too much for him to drive. 

It takes awhile.


End file.
